The seventeenth century begins—German plates—William Marshall—Lord Littleton—Huet, Bishop of Avranches.

IN 1604 Egidius Sadeler of Munich engraved for Arnold von Reyger a plate which is both signed and dated. At the top of the plate is the Latin motto “Ad Deum Refugium,” and in another part of the plate are the letters “Z. G. M. Z.,” standing for “Zu Gott meine Zuflucht,” the German version of the Latin motto.

In 1619 Hans Hauer designed and Hans Troschel engraved a characteristic and very elaborate ex libris for Johann Wilhelm Krep von Krepenstein, of Nuremberg. Both designer and engraver were natives of Nuremberg, the former born in 1582, and the latter about six years later.

In about the year 1623 Raphael Sadeler engraved a bookplate in three sizes for the Electoral Library of the Dukes of Bavaria at Munich. He also engraved a plate for the Elector Palatine’s libraries in Heidelberg and in Rome.

Raphael Sadeler and his elder brother Jan, and their nephew Gillis or Egidius Sadeler, were all skilful with the graver. Raphael was born at Brussels in 1555, and with his elder brother travelled through Germany, producing many engravings, and afterwards settling at Venice. Egidius, the nephew, was born at Antwerp in 1575; taught by his uncles Jan and Raphael, he lived to far surpass his teachers. After spending some time in Italy, he was invited to Prague by the Emperor Rudolph II. He died at Prague in 1629.

In 1640, or a little earlier, William Marshall engraved a bookplate for Edward, Lord Littleton, born in 1589 at Munston, in Shropshire, his father being Sir Edward Littleton, Chief Justice of North Wales, and his mother being a daughter of Edmund Walter, Chief Justice of South Wales. From Christ Church, Oxford, Littleton, in 1608, entered the Inner Temple. On his father’s death, in 1621, he became Chief Justice of North Wales. In 1625 he became member of Parliament for Leominster. He became counsel to the University of Oxford, Reader to the Inner Temple, and Recorder of London. In 1634 he was made Solicitor-General. In the meantime his great learning and high character made him much respected, and the City Aldermen sent him a courteous gift of two hogsheads of claret and a pipe of canary. Next, he became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and soon Lord Chancellor. In February, 1641, he was created Lord Littleton of Munston. Happily for him he died young, as in those stormy times he was too just a man to be a good party politician. It is interesting to note that on May 21st, 1644, he was commissioned to raise a regiment of foot soldiers, consisting of gentlemen of the Inns of Court and Chancery and others, himself becoming colonel. The great Lord Clarendon wrote of Littleton as a “handsome and proper man of a very graceful presence, and notorious for courage, which in his youth he had manifested with his sword.”

Above all, Littleton was incorruptible, winning, and keeping the respect of such opposite men as Clarendon and Bulstrode Whitelocke. Here we get a glimpse of his library, as it is recorded that when the Commons seized his books Whitelocke interceded and got the books given into his own care, so that, as he expressed it, “when God gave them a happy accommodation” he might restore them to rightful hands. The arms on the bookplate are the arms of Lyttelton of Frankley.

Littleton’s first wife was a daughter of John Lyttelton (spelt as you please) of Frankley, Worcestershire. Littleton died at Oxford on August 27th, 1645, and is buried in Christ Church Cathedral.

Not the least interesting point about this Littleton plate is that it was engraved by William Marshall, a name or initials found on such a great number of portraits and other book illustrations of this period. Not very much is known about him. The dates of his works range from 1591 to 1649.

A characteristic German plate, dated 1645, is, by the good authority of Warnecke, the work of the engraver Raphael Custos of Augsburg, eldest son of Dominicus de Coster, painter and engraver, and grandson of Pieter De Coster or Balten, poet and painter. This plate, engraved for Wilhelm and Clara Krep von Krepenstein, embraces the coats-of-arms of the small number of thirty-one ancestors.

are the inscriptions on the plate here illustrated of Theophilus Raynaud or Raynald, born in Piedmont, and died at the age of eighty in Lyons on October 31st, 1663. He was a learned Jesuit, and a most untiring student all his life, but, unlike most inveterate readers, he was bitter and morose of temper. Perhaps this was caused by his reading excesses, as it is told that he thought fifteen minutes almost too much to give to any meal. His portrait is in his: “tractatus depileo, coeterisque capitis tegminibus tam sacris quam profanis. D. D. Petro de Maridat, in magno Regis Christianissimi Consilio Senatori dicatus.” Under the portrait is the shield-of-arms, as on the bookplate, and above it the motto: “Dextera Domini fecit virtutem.” Below is: “Non potuit coelum Capiti par addere, tegmen, Hoc Coeli effigiem perficientis erit.” The engraving is signed “L Spirinx fecit.” Nagler gives Ludwig Spirinx as an engraver born at Lyons or Dijon, and working in Brussels from about 1640 to 1660.

Coming once more to Nuremberg, there is the 1674 plate engraved by D. KrÜger for Colonel Georg Christof Volckamer. There is no inscription on the plate, which shows a cherub sitting on a hill and holding a shield-of-arms. The colonel was not content to choose between helmet and coronet; he has elected to have both.

One of the many plates of which the engraver is not known is that of Franz Ludwig Anton Freiherr von Lerchenfeld-Prennberg. The shield is borne on two flags crossing one another. At the foot of the plate is engraved “Ex Libris, Francisci Ludovici,” etc., giving all the owner’s titles. He was Chamberlain of the Munich High Court of Appeal.

A well-known plate is that of Pierre Daniel Huet, Bishop of Avranches, and probably the best-remembered holder of that ancient See, and tenant of the famous Bishop’s Palace. He was Bishop of Avranches from 1689 to 1699, but, born at Caen in 1630, he was already, in 1650, a renowned savant, and twelve years later founded the Academy of Sciences at Caen. He did not become a priest until he was forty-six years old; but all his life he was an enormous reader, and gifted with a wondrous memory. Of course he wrote books as well as reading the lore of others.

At Avranches visitors, calling for advice from their bishop, were told “He cannot see you, he is studying”; and in vain they claimed that they wanted to see a diocesan who had finished his studies.

The plate was engraved in four sizes for the Jesuits’ College in Paris, to which he gave his library in 1692. As he spent the latter years of his long life with the Paris Jesuits he was not long separated from his books, and lived ninety-two years, so that none might say that in him much study had produced a weariness of the flesh.

In 1692 another library, left this time by will, and accordingly, too, another ex libris, came to the Jesuits of Paris, and from a friend of Huet, Gilles MÉnage. Like Huet, his appetite for study was vast and his memory unfailing. Born at Angers in 1613, he died in Paris in 1692. Thus he spent some eighty years among the shrewd litterateurs of that day, and the following conversation need not be taken as a sign of want of veracity on his part. Angers seems, like Crete of old, to have had a lying reputation. He, asking a lady to define untruthfulness, received for reply, that as for defining lying she did not quite know, but liar she would define as “Monsieur MÉnage!”

It will be seen how little it had yet become the custom for bibliophiles to have bookplates. Neither Huet nor MÉnage used ex libris for themselves, and to this day no bookplate of MoliÈre, or Racine, or La Fontaine, or of many other leaders of that age has been found.

After about 1650 a change is seen in the styles of French ex libris. Helmets go out of use, and, for lack of better ideas, coronets are assumed, often by those who had not the faintest right to them. The square shield, in time, gives place to the oval form.